Exposing the Troubling Relationship Between Popular Racial Imagery and Social Policy in the 21St Century Imani Perry*

Do You Really Love New York?: Exposing the Troubling Relationship Between Popular Racial Imagery and Social Policy in the 21st Century Imani Perry* During the 21st century, reality television has become a cultural phenomenon in the United States. Part of what makes the concept so engaging is the fantasy of "truth" presented on the screen. At the same time, any savvy viewer is aware of how the production and editing process manipulates reality television. In this essay, I explore how images, particularly racialized images of African Americans in reality television, dovetail with the preoccupations of public policy. I argue that the image of truth in reality television supports a representation of African Americans as culturally deficient, personally irresponsible, and in need of external impositions of order. Although I stop short of arguing that reality television leads to particular policies, I do contend that there is a dynamic relationship between image and social practice. Part of our agenda in law and policy is to participate in unraveling racialized popular images and replacing them with a more nuanced analysis of social conditions affecting African-American communities. INTRODUCTION It is well-established that television shapes people's beliefs regarding public issues 2 and that public opinion and popular discourses shape policy. 3 Also, public policy measures taken by legislators are validated with their constituencies through political language. Might it not also be the case, then, Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law-Camden, Distinguished Visitor, Princeton University Center for African American Studies 2007-2008. 2. See ROGER SILVERSTONE, THE MESSAGE OF TELEVISION: MYTH AND NARRATIVE IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE (1981); MARSHALL MCLUHAN, UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: THE EXTENSIONS OF MAN (McGraw Hill 1964). See also Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., The "Welfare Queen" Experiment: How Viewers React to Images of African American Mothers on Welfare, 53 NIEMAN REPORTS (Summer 1999), available at http://repositories.cdlib.org/ccc/media/007/ (discussing this effect as it particularly relates to race). 3. See generally SUSAN HERBST, NUMBERED VOICES: How OPINION POLLING HAS SHAPED AMERICAN POLITICS (1995). 2008] DO YOU REALLYLOVE NEW YORK? that popular imagery plays a significant role in policy as well as in politics? With that idea in mind, consider the enormous popularity of reality television. Many different types of unscripted programs fall under the broad definition of reality television, including voter-decided competitions, courtroom dramas, talk shows, and manufactured domestic situations. A shorthand definition of reality television might be that it is unscripted. Unscripted television, however has been around at least since the 1940s, examples being Candid Camera which debuted on ABC radio in 1947 and on ABC television network in 1948, and gameshows like Truth or Consequences which ran on NBC radio and then television from 1940 to 1957.4 Annette Hill, author of Reality TV: Audiences and PopularFactual Television, describes the "reality" genre as, "a catch-all category that includes a wide range of entertainment programmes about real people.. .[it] is located in border territories between information and entertainment, documentary and drama.",5 I would argue that reality television is further distinguished by its depiction of human relationships and intense emotional drama, either "real" (meaning that they have developed outside of the production of the television program) or constructed, through the creation of domestic or social relations within the context of production, or through the competitive framework of the show (as in American Idol for example.) Reality television provides many of the images of African Americans on American television in the twenty first century. This "market share" of black representation is heightened, in part, as a result of the dearth of the sitcom in American television, an arena in which African 6 Americans had made great headway in television presence. Stereotypic racial imagery is widespread in reality television. There are many possible explanations for the prevalence of stereotypes in the purportedly "real" format. First, the choice of participants is likely shaped by producers' ideas about the viewers' voyeuristic interests. Second, participants who aspire for celebrity status are aware of the types of behavior likely to get more airtime. Generally speaking, the more outrageous the spectacle, the more attention a person gets. This serves the individual willing to exploit hysterical racial stereotypes for celebrity. Third, editing decisions create narratives of events and character development. It is quite easy to imagine that racial stereotypes impact television editing. Editors are individuals who exist in the same society 7 as the rest of us, a society rife with racial stereotypes and bigotries. 4. See generally ALLEN FUNT, CANDIDLY ALLEN FUNT: A MILLION SMILES LATER (1994); STEVE RYAN & FROST WOSTBROCK, THE ULTIMATE TV GAMESHOW BOOK (2006). 5. ANNETTE HILL, REALITY TV: AUDIENCES AND POPULAR FACTUAL TELEVISION 2 (2005). 6. See Fern Gillespie, Major Networks Black Out African American Comedies, THE CRISIS, September/October 2006, at 57. See also HERMAN GRAY, WATCHING RACE: TELEVISION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR "BLACKNESS" (1995). 7. See Jerry Kang, Trojan Horses of Race, 118 HARV. L. REV. 1489 (2005). Kang discusses the role of unconscious bias in the operation of racial discrimination in the contemporary United 94 BERKELEY JOURNAL OFAFRICAN-AMERICANLA W & POLICY [VOL. X:2 In many ways the character development in reality television can be seen as a kind of collage in which the composition may be compelling and human but look little like the original uncut version. And so we can look at it and consider how individuals are "composed" according to racial stereotypes. At the same time the consolidation of corporate media in the late twentieth century has led to diminished opportunities for diversity in representations of people of color 8 and a devolution of representations of people into the "lowest common denominator" of stereotype precisely because stereotypic images are the most broadly familiar and therefore lend themselves to widespread "appeal" and 9 marketability. In today's post-welfare reform society one can see the reconstitution of popular stereotypic images that were so critical in the political arguments about pre-1996 welfare state brokenness.'0 These images are perhaps even more insidious now because they have the veneer of truth as they proliferate in reality television. They capitalize on the perceived authority and pleasure of the voyeur "seeing it with his own eyes" and they shape both perception and misperception. In this essay, I will discuss a series of reality programs that display the same cultural logic as that found in contemporary social policy. In the first section I will describe the relationship between paternity testing on The Maury Povich Show and the presence of a conservative and patriarchal conception of family relations in contemporary social policy, specifically means tested benefits. In the second section I will discuss the VHI program I Love New York in light of the retreat from social policy initiatives directed to poor women of color, arguing that the depiction in the show coincides with narratives in policy and politics of undeserving black female recipients of welfare. These narratives have been central to the implementation of punitive policy as well as the limitation of society's safety nets. Finally, in the third section I describe a series of shows including We Got to Do Better, The Salt N' Pepa Show, and Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School as examples of what I term "racial reform shows." These shows affirm a conservative States. Kang argues that television images shape people's likelihood to feel racial bias against members of racial minority groups. Taken from another perspective, the evidence in social cognition research which he identifies also strongly supports an inference that those who make decisions about depictions of people of color on television are impacted by the messages they have received from the society, thus creating cycles of biased representation and biased sentiments. 8. See Leonard M. Baynes, Race, Antitrust Theory, Media Consolidation and Online Content: The Lack of Substitutes Available to Media Consumers of Color, 39 U. MICH. J.L. REFORM 199 (2006). 9. See Travis L. Dixon, A Social Cognitive Approach to Studying Racial Stereotyping in the Mass Media, 6 African American Research Perspectives (Winter 2000), available at www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/prba/perspectives/winter2000/tdixon I .pdf 10. See generally JIMMIE L. REEVES & RICHARD CAMPBELL, CRACKED COVERAGE: TELEVISION NEWS, THE ANTI-COCAINE CRUSADE, AND THE REAGAN LEGACY (1994) (providing a thorough discussion of the impact of the welfare queen image on welfare reform efforts). 2008] DO YOU REALLY LOVE NEW YORK? ideology which argues that policy initiatives cannot and have not assisted the black poor because the problem is not a lack of opportunity but rather their behavioral failures. In arguing for the reformation of black communities or black individuals with stereotypical behavior the shows either explicitly or implicitly advance a bootstraps idea of black progress and reject evidence of systematic inequality and lack of access as explanations for persistent racial disparities. I. "YOU ARE NOT THE FATHER": MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK PARENTHOOD AND THE ROLE OF THE

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